Impact crusher from BHS-Sonthofen crushes Turkish perlite
1 The PB 0806 impact crusher from BHS-Sonthofen processes two different types of perlite for the juice industry
© BHS-Sonthofen
High-performance minerals are critical to many industries – from plastics and paint manufacturing to batteries and filtration processes. Imerys, one of the leading global providers of specialised mineral solutions for industry, has expertise in producing a wide range of high-performance mineral-based materials. In Turkey, Imerys subsidiary Harborlite Aegean processes two types of perlite, an amorphous volcanic glass mined there from a nearby quarry. The Italian and Spanish juice industries use this product for filtration.
Reliability and low wear costs
In 2021, one of the crushers at Harborlite Aegean’s plant in Dikili needed to be replaced. The old Turkish impact mill no longer reached the required particle size of 35 mm and had thus reached the end of its service life. Imerys decided to turn to BHS-Sonthofen, which the company knew from a similar project: shortly before, BHS had supplied an RSMX rotor centrifugal crusher to an Imerys plant in Teutschenthal in Saxony-Anhalt. There, the machine processes aluminium oxide – a highly abrasive mineral. The material posed no major challenge for the robust RSMX. The machine proved to be a reliable choice with low wear costs. Thus, the technology and service of BHS-Sonthofen convinced Imerys that the German company would also be considered for the replacement of the Turkish perlite crusher.
2 Harborlite Aegean has replaced an old crusher with the impact crusher from BHS-Sonthofen
© BHS-Sonthofen
Trials with original material in Sonthofen
After an initial review of the desired requirements, BHS and Harborlite Aegean decided that the impact crusher type PB 0806 with a capacity of 50 t/h was ideally suited for the task, even though the BHS machine had never been used for this purpose before. The fact that the machine’s performance could be extensively tested at the Test Center in Sonthofen made the team very confident. For the tests, a truck transported the two types of original material to Germany. One was pre-crushed perlite rock, which was to be brought from 0 – 90 mm to a target size of 0 – 35 mm. The other material was a pre-crushed fraction of another type of perlite with 0 – 300 mm and also a target size of 0 – 35 mm.
“Conducting tests with original material is standard practice at BHS-Sonthofen,” explains BHS project manager Hans Traut. “Our tests ensure that the machine is the best choice for the customer. At the same time, they ensure an optimal machine configuration for minimum wear and help us to adjust the machine so that the minerals processed meet the company’s crushing requirements.” The trials confirmed the experts’ recommendation. The BHS impact crusher is shown to be a particularly economical solution for the fine crushing of perlite with a maintenance-friendly design. A decisive advantage for Harborlite Aegean is the adjustable gap width, as this allows the employees to adjust the machine and avoid wear that leads to inaccuracies in terms of the desired particle size. This ensures consistent product quality with low maintenance costs.
The throughput of 50 t/h and the size of the machine also matched Harborlite Aegean’s requirements and the existing plant. The Turkish company successfully installed the machine at the end of December 2021. “The impact crusher from BHS has proven to be the perfect solution for our plant and has been running smoothly since the start of production in January 2022,” sums up Hikmet Bozkurt, Plant & Mine Manager at Harborlite Aegean in Izmir/Turkey.
